1. Prepare a steamer basket. In a food processor or a large bowl, mash beans until they look like mush. Now, mix in your onion, garlic and spices (from the coriander to the sugar).
2. Next, add the broth, vegetable oil, soy sauce, liquid smoke and nutritional yeast. Mix it all up. Add the vital wheat gluten. It is essential that you add the gluten last because otherwise your spices will make a spiral through everything and it is disgusting.
3. Now mix it all together until it looks like bread dough. Okay, this is the fun part. Tear off sheets of aluminum foil. Form dough into long skinny strips, about 1/2" thick and 5" long (or for lil' smokeys, 1 1/2" x 1/4"). They will not look like hot dogs, yet.
4. Roll them in the foil (with ends twisted) and place them in your steamer. Let them steam for 40 minutes. They will expand. After that, unwrap them and store them in an air tight container or eat them.
This recipe makes between 30-45 lil' smokeys and up to 12 hot dogs depending on the size you form them into.
Source of recipe: This recipe is great. It was created for my son Jonah because I want him to have all the experiences with food that I have had. If you'd like, these go great with the corn dog batter that I wrote some time back (http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=36834.0).

This recipe looks delicious, but, unfortunately, as so many other meat substitute recipes, it requires gluten. I have celiac disease, so that is not an option for me. Does anyone have any suggestions how I could make this without using gluten? :'(

For the steamer I just put a colander inside of a large pot with water about 2 inches of water at the bottom. Then I put the foil wrapped dogs in the colander and put a lid on top. It worked perfectly, but don't let the water run out!

For the steamer I just put a colander inside of a large pot with water about 2 inches of water at the bottom. Then I put the foil wrapped dogs in the colander and put a lid on top. It worked perfectly, but don't let the water run out!

This sounds great, I am planing to have a BBQ this weekend, I do not own a steamer, is it possible to just grill them rather than use a steamer?

Sadly, it is the steam that makes the concoction expand into fully shaped dogs. But do not fret, you don't need a real steamer to make these. Just a large pot and 5 thin metal pie plates. Here is a link to a drawing of the said contraption: http://i53.tinypic.com/28u30ww.jpg

If I were to make these without beans, I would probably substitute TVP or tapioca pearls for a sort of texture. I'm sure that using straight gluten would work all right but the texture would be lacking. As for the nutrional yeast It is really just a flavoring agent. maybe a touch more soy sauce (I use Bragg's) and some finely ground cashews would help bring back the flavor lost from taking out the nutritional yeast.

Im going to try these as i make a similar sausage but without the beans or nut yeast, i will still omit the nut yeast as i dont eat any glutamates, do you think if i add a little more gluten to compensate that that will be ok? :)